Proposal for the Creation of the World Carbon Community

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Proposal for the Creation of the World Carbon Community

Federalist Action Hits: 213

Troy Davis
Consulting democracy engineer. President, Association to support the School of Democracy,
Strasbourg, France. President, World Citizen Foundation, N.Y., USA.

His Holiness Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
Vatican City 00120

Strasbourg, 8 March 2024

Ref: Proposal for the creation of the World Carbon Community

Most Holy Father,

I am writing to Your Holiness regarding an innovative concept that may be helpful to Your Holiness and to the Church in its teachings regarding climate change.

Your Holiness called on world leaders in 2021 at COP 26 to “bring about effective solutions to the ecological crisis”, and notably issued a cry of alarm about the “deterioration of our common home” (1). Your Holiness also rightly stated in the encyclical Laudato Si (2015) (2), the following: Beginning in the middle of the last century and overcoming many difficulties, there has been a growing conviction that our planet is a homeland and that humanity is one people living in a common home.

Unfortunately, the world has not lived up to these calls. But what is more surprising is that we apparently have not internalized the painful lessons of 20th century history, which show us the way forward.

History teaches us it is difficult, if not impossible, to persevere in a collective political decision if no robust monitoring mechanism is put in place. This is a crucial lesson of the 20^th century. We learned in 1945 what we did not learn in 1918, that only permanent institutions can bring peace, and that the pieces of paper we call 'peace treaties' are not enough. So, in addition to replacing the League of Nations with the United Nations, we began a process of creating permanent institutions, to implement the historic ambitions of creating a lasting European peace to enable real progress.

It began in 1950 with Robert Schuman, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, who launched the process of European integration in his speech on May 9 :

“World peace cannot be safeguarded without creative efforts commensurate with the dangers that threaten it.

The contribution that an organized and vibrant Europe can make to civilization is essential to maintaining peaceful relations. By championing a united Europe for more than twenty years, France has always had the essential aim of serving peace. Europe was not built, and we had war.

Europe will not be built all at once, nor in an overall construction: it will be built through concrete achievements that first create de facto solidarity.” (3)

The goal from the start was not to create European peace, but world peace. Indeed, the Founding Fathers of United Europe, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, Joseph Bech, Jean Monnet (as well as the great Jacques Delors) - all Christian Democrats – not only came out of the worst war in the history of Humanity, but had also experienced the first Great War – which was to be “the very last one” – as young men. They therefore knew that European peace could ultimately only be a by-product of universal peace.

Their goal was therefore not, as some politicians want today, to create a “Fortress Europe”, but a Europe united in peace, a catalyst for a world united in peace. How to achieve this world peace? By first making peace in Europe following clear principles and in an innovative way, then by sharing this experience with all men and women of good will. In other words, after having been the greatest laboratory of war in History, Europe became the greatest laboratory of peace in History.

As we know, the Founding Fathers, as educated Catholics, had been influenced by the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) of His Holiness Leo XIII, which defined the social doctrine of the Church, criticizing both unbridled capitalism and nascent communism (4).

Europe was not, and is not, a chemistry laboratory, but it is a laboratory of good governance, fundamental rights and democracy. The Founders’ idea which everyone forgot was that the world would later unite, using the European experience as inspiration or model. That is indeed what happened in several regions, such as Africa and South America, with regional supranational institutions inspired by the Council of Europe, its Parliamentary Assembly and its European Court of Human Rights, as well as the European Communities, which became the European Union with its European Parliament.

We are therefore today in the second historical stage envisaged by the Founders, but we seem to have forgotten that the stage after the construction of Europe should be that of the construction of the World. The founders did not know what new challenges we would face but were convinced that they had found the right method: the construction of common institutions dedicated to clear tasks.

The current challenge is therefore this: what institutions does the world need to manage the global climate crisis, to “no longer postpone but implement” (5) international diplomatic agreements such as the Paris Accords? Because of successive crises (the economic crisis, the global pandemic, war in Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, etc.), it is difficult for States to focus and fulfill their commitments if their attention is taken elsewhere. It is precisely to respond to this systemic and recurring problem that Humanity has invented dedicated institutions. When we forgot to do this, we paid an exorbitant price.

This is particularly evident with the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which – in addition to its disastrous provisions – failed to create a European institution dedicated to the peace agreement. The League of Nations came into being but was ineffective, and so after World War II, we created the United Nations, and drastically changed course in Europe. Step by step, we then built the European Union, in a pragmatic and reasoned manner, institution by institution.

The Church has stimulated, understood, and reintegrated the European message and the lessons of history in a virtuous spiral. Moreover, the European method itself was inspired by the history of the Church, because the latter is the perfect example of a dedicated institution which endures beyond the vicissitudes of history and individual personalities, certainly important, but powerless without a global framework. For example, the term “community” was taken from the Church, then used for the first three communities (coal and steel, atomic, economic) as well as the principle of “subsidiarity”.

In Laudato Si, Your Holiness alerted us, once again, to “the great deterioration of our common home” which is this beautiful blue ball spiralling in space, as well as to “how weak international political responses have been” (⁋54). Your Holiness pointed out, in particular, the increased risks of war because of ecological crises, an important link but too rarely underlined. Your Holiness was then in the direct line of His illustrious predecessors.

Thus, Your Holiness pointed out the inadequacy of the current system, whether in general or in a particular area such as the oceans:

Enforceable international agreements are urgently needed, since local authorities are not always capable of effective intervention. Relations between states must be respectful of each other’s sovereignty, but must also lay down mutually agreed means of averting regional disasters which would eventually affect everyone. Global regulatory norms are needed to impose obligationsand prevent unacceptable actions, for example, when powerful companies or countries dump contaminated waste or offshore polluting industries in other countries.
Let us also mention the system of governance of the oceans. International and regional conventions do exist, but fragmentation and the lack of strict mechanisms of regulation, control and penalization end up undermining these efforts. The growing problem of marine waste and the protection of the open seas represent particular challenges. What is needed, in effect, is an agreement on systems of governancefor the whole range of so-called “global commons.

(The underlined parts are underlined by this letter’s author.)

In 1963, Saint John XXIII made this method explicit in the encyclical Pacem in Terris (6) (citing subsidiarity as a founding principle in paragraph 140) and explained in detail its applicability to the global problem of peace, which remained the main problem then, in the middle of the Cold War, with two nuclear superpowers in global competition. But while Robert Schuman in 1950 only mentioned world peace at the beginning and then focused on Europe, Saint John XXIII made a masterful demonstration and explained that the world system was structurally inadequate, in general, to solve the problems.

His Holiness demonstrated this in the section entitled, Inadequacy of Modern States to ensure the universal common good :

In the past rulers of States seem to have been able to make sufficient provision for the universal common good through the normal diplomatic channels, or by top-level meetings and discussions, treaties and agreements; by using, that is, the ways and means suggested by the natural law, the law of nations, or international law.
In our own day, however, mutual relationships between States have undergone a far reaching change. On the one hand, the universal common good gives rise to problems of the utmost gravity, complexity and urgency – especially as regards the preservation of the security and peace of the whole world. On the other hand, the rulers of individual nations, being all on an equal footing, largely fail in their efforts to achieve this, however much they multiply their meetings and their endeavours to discover more fitting instruments of justice. And this is no reflection on their sincerity and enterprise. It is merely that their authority is not sufficiently influential.
We are thus driven to the conclusion that the shape and structure of political life in the modern world, and the influence exercised by public authority in all the nations of the world are unequal to the task of promoting the common good of all peoples.

Saint John XXIII could just as easily have described the current UN and COPs and their inability to “ensure the universal common good”.

His Holiness continued:

Today the universal common good presents us with problems which are world-wide in their dimensions; problems, therefore, which cannot be solved except by a public authority with power, organization and means co-extensive with these problems, and with a world-wide sphere of activity. Consequently the moral order itself demands the establishment of some such general form of public authority.

As Your Holiness mentioned in Laudato Si (⁋175), His Holiness Benedict XVI reaffirmed this concept in 2009 in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate:

To manage the global economy… to guarantee the protection of the environment… for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago … The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization (⁋ 67)

Concretely, although the “universal common good” implies “a public authority whose power, constitution and means of action also take on global dimensions…”, the European experience demonstrates that an approach bringing together a few voluntary States at the start and extending through the demonstration of its effectiveness and legitimacy is convincing. This progressive approach is confirmed a little later in Pacem in Terris:

We would remind such people that it is the law of nature that all things must be of gradual growth. If there is to be any improvement in human institutions, the work must be done slowly and deliberately from within. Pope Pius XII expressed it in these terms: "Salvation and justice consist not in the uprooting of an outdated system, but in a well-designed policy of development.

That is why we suggest that the member states of the COP negotiate, drawing inspiration from the real, historical and convincing example of the European Coal and Steel Community, a global carbon community. This non-partisan global community would aim to implement the political decisions of its Member States, keeping in mind the admonition of Saint John XXIII, “this general authority equipped with worldwide power and adequate means for achieving the universal common good cannot be imposed by force. It must be set up with the consent of all nations. If its work is to be effective, it must operate with fairness, absolute impartiality, and with dedication to the common good of all peoples.” (⁋ 138, Pacem in Terris).

The undeniable fact of the success of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which started the historic process of creating a united and peaceful Europe, a European Union which is a sui generis creation, should help the leaders and diplomats, thinkers and journalists, activists and citizens, to support the project of this necessary global community. The goal of the ECSC was different from the goal of the future World Carbon Community, but the principle of such an institution, the symbolic parallel, the structure too, should convince the world to move forward.

The World Carbon Community alone will not be able to save us from the worst consequences of climate change, because political decisions will always have to be taken by leaders inserted in a World-System which is no longer up to the demands of a globalised economy. However, the simple fact that this community will help its Members in a technical way to fulfil their political obligations will be of crucial help, and will open up new room for manoeuver.

Furthermore, what few remember, including the Members of the European Parliament to whom I had the privilege of asking the question, is that the European Parliament, the first democratically elected supranational institution, is the direct continuation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the ECSC. Indeed, this first Common Assembly, which met in Strasbourg on September 10, 1952, acquired more and more functions, becoming the assembly for the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and that of the European Economic Community (EEC). Ten years later, in 1962, members changed (on their own initiative) its name to European Parliament.

The first direct elections by universal suffrage to the European Parliament then occurred in 1979. This seminal symbolic and political step for humankind, the creation of a supranational democratic assembly, joins the other unique supranational institution of Humanity, the European Court of Human Rights (under the Council of Europe), also sitting in Strasbourg.

The European Parliament, this unique and essential institution, is therefore a child of the ECSC. Similarly, the World Carbon Community will include a parliamentary assembly of its member states, as well as an executive body and a court of justice, like the ECSC before it, guarantors of its legitimacy and effectiveness.

I remain at Your Holiness' disposal and hope to discuss a concrete strategy to implement this idea, as well as similar democratic concepts applied to other major issues of our time such as peace in the Middle East, during an audience with Your Holiness, at your convenience.

Please accept, Most Holy Father, the expression of my highest consideration,

Troy Davis

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Year XXXVII, Number 3, November 2024

Proposal for the Creation of the World Carbon Community